Mechanisms of improvement in generalized anxiety disorder: A mediation and moderated mediation analysis from a randomized controlled trial.

Background: Generalized anxiety disorder (GAD) is associated with the lowest treatment response rate among all anxiety disorders. Understanding mechanisms of improvement may help to develop more effective and personalized treatments.

Aim: The objective of the study was to investigate different improvement mechanisms in the treatment of individuals diagnosed with GAD.

Effects of the Interculturality and Mindfulness Program (PIM) on University Students: A Quasi-Experimental Study.

Rates of mental health issues have been increasing among university students. This study investigates the effects of the Interculturality and Mindfulness Program (PIM) on academic students on mindfulness, emotional regulation, depression, anxiety, stress, life satisfaction, optimism, positive solitude, and loneliness. A quasi-experimental research was conducted, with pre- and post-test comparative measurements in three groups: in-person (IG), synchronous online (OG), and passive control (CG).

A preliminary neuroimaging investigation of the effects of mindfulness training on attention reorienting and amygdala reactivity to emotional faces in adolescent and adult females.

Introduction: Adolescence is a time of increased emotional reactivity and improving cognitive control. Mindfulness meditation training may foster adolescents' cognitive control and emotional regulation skills; however little is known about the impact of mindfulness training in adolescents compared to adults. We examined the effect of mindfulness meditation versus a closely matched active control condition (relaxation training) on behavioral and neural measures of cognitive control and emotional reactivity in a small group of adolescents and adults.

Open monitoring meditation alters the EEG gamma coherence in experts meditators: The expert practice exhibit greater right intra-hemispheric functional coupling.

Aim: This study investigated the differences in frontoparietal EEG gamma coherence between expert meditators (EM) and naïve meditators (NM).

Material And Methods: This is a cross-sectional study with a sample of twenty-one healthy adults divided under two groups (experts meditators vs. naive-meditators), with analyzing the intra-hemispheric coherence of frontoparietal gamma oscillations by electroencephalography during the study steps: EEG resting-state 1, during the open presence meditation practice, and EEG resting-state 2.

COVID-19 and mental health: A review and the role of telehealth and virtual reality.

On March 12, 2020, with more than 20,000 confirmed cases and almost 1000 deaths in the European Region, the World Health Organization classified the COVID-19 outbreak as a pandemic. As of August 15, 2020, there are 21.5 million confirmed cases of COVID-19 and over 766,000 deaths from the virus, worldwide.

What and who? Mindfulness in the mental health setting.

A strong and growing evidence base exists for the use of mindfulness-based interventions to prevent relapse in major depression and for the self-management of chronic physical health conditions (e.g. pain), but the evidence in other domains of mental health work is still emerging.

A Neurophysiological and Neuropsychological Consideration of Mindful Movement: Clinical and Research Implications.

In this article, we present ideas related to three key aspects of mindfulness training: the regulation of attention via noradrenaline, the importance of working memory and its various components (particularly the central executive and episodic buffer), and the relationship of both of these to mind-wandering. These same aspects of mindfulness training are also involved in the preparation and execution of movement and implicated in the pathophysiology of psychosis. We argue that by moving in a mindful way, there may be an additive effect of training as the two elements of the practice (mindfulness and movement) independently, and perhaps synergistically, engage common underlying systems (the default mode network).

Functional similarity of facial emotion processing between people with a first episode of psychosis and healthy subjects.

Background: Neurofunctional and behavioral abnormalities in facial emotion processing (FEmoP) have been consistently found in schizophrenia patients, but studies assessing brain functioning in early phases are scarce and the variety of experimental paradigms in current literature make comparisons difficult. The present work focuses on assessing FEmoP in people experiencing a psychotic episode for the first time with different experimental paradigm approaches.

Methods: Twenty-two patients with a first psychotic episode (FPe) (13 males) took part in a functional magnetic resonance imaging study (1.

Effects of facial emotion recognition remediation on visual scanning of novel face stimuli.

Previous research shows that emotion recognition in schizophrenia can be improved with targeted remediation that draws attention to important facial features (eyes, nose, mouth). Moreover, the effects of training have been shown to last for up to one month after training. The aim of this study was to investigate whether improved emotion recognition of novel faces is associated with concomitant changes in visual scanning of these same novel facial expressions.

Brain imaging analysis can identify participants under regular mental training.

Multivariate pattern recognition approaches have become a prominent tool in neuroimaging data analysis. These methods enable the classification of groups of participants (e.g.

Meditation training increases brain efficiency in an attention task.

Meditation is a mental training, which involves attention and the ability to maintain focus on a particular object. In this study we have applied a specific attentional task to simply measure the performance of the participants with different levels of meditation experience, rather than evaluating meditation practice per se or task performance during meditation. Our objective was to evaluate the performance of regular meditators and non-meditators during an fMRI adapted Stroop Word-Colour Task (SWCT), which requires attention and impulse control, using a block design paradigm.

Neural response to specific components of fearful faces in healthy and schizophrenic adults.

Perception of fearful faces is associated with functional activation of cortico-limbic structures, which has been found altered in individuals with psychiatric disorders such as schizophrenia, autism and major depression. The objective of this study was to isolate the brain response to the features of standardized fearful faces by incorporating principal component analysis (PCA) into the analysis of neuroimaging data of healthy volunteers and individuals with schizophrenia. At the first stage, the visual characteristics of morphed fearful facial expressions (FEEST, Young et al.

Aspects of social cognition in anorexia nervosa: affective and cognitive theory of mind.

Although social functioning is clearly impaired in anorexia nervosa (AN), there has been limited empirical assessment of this domain in this illness. This study assesses social cognition in AN by examining performance on two 'theory of mind' (ToM) tasks; Baron-Cohen's "Reading the mind in the Eyes" task (RME) and Happé's cartoon task. These tasks probe affective and cognitive ToM, respectively.

Functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) of attention processes in presumed obligate carriers of schizophrenia: preliminary findings.

Background: Presumed obligate carriers (POCs) are the first-degree relatives of people with schizophrenia who, although do not exhibit the disorder, are in direct lineage of it. Thus, this subpopulation of first-degree relatives could provide very important information with regard to the investigation of endophenotypes for schizophrenia that could clarify the often contradictory findings in schizophrenia high-risk populations. To date, despite the extant literature on schizophrenia endophenotypes, we are only aware of one other study that examined the neural mechanisms that underlie cognitive abnormalities in this group.

Remediation of facial emotion perception in schizophrenia: concomitant changes in visual attention.

The study examined changes in visual attention in schizophrenia following training with a social-cognitive remediation package designed to improve facial emotion recognition (the Micro-Expression Training Tool; METT). Forty out-patients with schizophrenia were randomly allocated to active training (METT; n=26), or repeated exposure (RE; n=14); all completed an emotion recognition task with concurrent eye movement recording. Emotion recognition accuracy was significantly improved in the METT group, and this effect was maintained after one week.

Empathy, systemizing, and autistic traits in anorexia nervosa: a pilot study.

Objectives: This pilot study examined whether patients with anorexia nervosa (AN) would display an empathizing-systemizing psychometric profile similar to that found in autism spectrum disorders (ASD), and whether people with AN would score highly on a measure of autistic traits.

Method: Self-report measures of empathy, systemizing, and autistic traits were administered to 22 female AN patients and 45 female healthy controls (HC).

Results: AN patients and HCs did not differ significantly in their self-reported empathy and systemizing.

Impact of familiarity upon children's developing facial expression recognition.

Background: The impact of personal familiarity upon children's developing emotion-processing has been largely ignored in previous research, yet may prove particularly important given the emotional salience of such stimuli and children's greater exposure to familiar others compared to strangers. We examined the impact of personal familiarity upon developing facial expression recognition (FER).

Methods: Participants included 153 children, 4-15 years old.

A pilot study to investigate the effectiveness of emotion recognition remediation in schizophrenia using the micro-expression training tool.

Objective: Emotion recognition impairments are a common feature of schizophrenia. This pilot study investigates the effectiveness of the 'micro-expressions training tool' (METT) to help improve this skill.

Method: Twenty patients with schizophrenia and 20 healthy matched control participants completed the assessment, training and practice subsections of the METT.

The development of emotion-processing in children: effects of age, emotion, and intensity.

Background: This study examined the effects of age and two novel factors (intensity and emotion category) on healthy children's developing emotion-processing from 4 to 15 years using two matching paradigms.

Methods: An explicit emotion-matching task was employed in which children matched the emotion of a target individual, and an implicit task whereby participants ignored the emotive facial stimulus and matched identity. Four intensities (25%, 50%, 75%, and 100%) for each of five emotion categories (sad, anger, happy, fear, and disgust) were included and provided a novel avenue of emotion-processing exploration.

A reversal of the normal pattern of parahippocampal response to neutral and fearful faces is associated with reality distortion in schizophrenia.

Background: Individuals with schizophrenia demonstrate impaired recognition of facial expressions and may misattribute emotional salience to otherwise nonsalient stimuli. The neural mechanisms underlying this deficit and the relationship with different symptoms remain poorly understood.

Methods: We used event-related functional magnetic resonance imaging to measure neural responses to neutral, mildly fearful, and prototypically fearful facial expressions.

Do you see what I see? Interpretations of intentional movement in schizophrenia.

Objective: Current literature exploring theory of mind (ToM) abilities in patients with schizophrenia has failed to take into account the dynamic nature of complex social interactions. The aim of this study was to explore symptom specific impairments in theory of mind using a novel, dynamic task.

Methods: Subjects viewed short animations displaying three types of movement; random, goal directed, and socially complex (theory of mind).

Human attachment security is mediated by the amygdala: evidence from combined fMRI and psychophysiological measures.

The neural basis of human attachment security remains unexamined. Using event-related functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) and simultaneous recordings of skin conductance levels, we measured neural and autonomic responses in healthy adult individuals during a semantic conceptual priming task measuring human attachment security "by proxy". Performance during a stress but not a neutral prime condition was associated with response in bilateral amygdalae.

Social cognition in frontal lobe epilepsy.

This study investigated the social cognitive functioning of patients with frontal lobe epilepsy (FLE), using a range of procedures that have shown impairments in patients following focal prefrontal brain lesions. Fourteen participants with FLE were compared with 14 healthy controls on story tests of theory of mind (ToM), faux pas appreciation, mental and physical state cartoon humor appreciation, facial emotional recognition, and the ability to perceive eye gaze expression. They were not impaired on story tests of ToM and showed only a trend toward impairment on a test of faux pas appreciation.

Perception of negative affect in schizophrenia--functional and structural changes in the amygdala. Review.

Despite the evidence for impaired perception of negative affect in schizophrenia, there have been a few functional neuroimaging studies so far examining neural responses to facial negative emotional stimuli in this illness. These studies have demonstrated that schizophrenic patients relative to healthy controls fail to activate the amygdala in response to facial expressions of fear, and also during a sadness induction paradigm. These recent findings reflect functional amygdala abnormalities in overt displays of fear in schizophrenic patients.